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Monday, June 18, 2012

Map of Oz Monday - The Ozoplaning Map

Well, dear readers - I am still swamped with chores and such for the Winkie Convention later next month and Comic con which is only a few weeks away - thus blog posting has suffered. But enough of that, let's take a look at the next map!

This map was published as the end-sheets of Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz in 1939. It's interesting as it's the first map giving a sort of "realistic" bird's eye view of Oz. Sadly it's not very detailed. Many elements of Ozoplaning were created to help attract new reader's exposed to the MGM film which was released the same year: the title includes the words "Wizard of Oz," Dorothy and her three best known friends play an important part in the plot; the book begins with a party celebrating the anniversary of Dorothy's first journey to Oz which included a cake featuring a model of her Kansas farmhouse. So I suspect the map of Oz endpapers were also considered a good "introduction" to our favorite literary fairyland.

When I first saw this map it did make me wonder what Oz would look like if it were photographed from a high-altitude. Would the color of the vegetation be apparent enough to delineate borders to a viewer from on-high? When I have a little time perhaps I'll try to make one in Photoshop. Someday ... someday ...

Dick Martin's 1988 panorama "The Wonderful World of Oz" is included in the Library of Congress exhibit here: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/oz/ozsect3.html. It was also reproduced in Buscher & Hopkins (1999), Language of the Land: The Library of Congress Book of Literary Maps.